The Brief

California’s wildfire season gets worse every year for Avroh H. The smoke and grime that envelopes the 14-year-old’s home in Palo Alto heralds coughing fits and congestion that make it difficult to concentrate. Lately, he’s been prone to nosebleeds; he recently had one so severe it required cauterizing a blood vessel.

He’s also an environmentalist who feels a deep and spiritual connection with nature. His passion has escalated from starting a nature club at school to suing the Environmental Protection Agency because, he says, the fight to save the climate is a fight that ties his health to that of the natural world.

Avroh is one of 18 young people who have joined the latest in a series of lawsuits filed on behalf of youth who are struggling with the physical and emotional effects of the climate crisis. They accuse the EPA of failing to adequately protect children nationwide from environmental catastrophe, a novel argument in environmental justice. It also claims the agency has discriminated against them by discounting the economic value of their lives and their futures as it decides how to regulate climate pollution.

Genesis B. v. the United States Environmental Protection Agency, filed on their behalf by the nonprofit environmental advocacy group Our Children’s Trust, asks a federal court to hold the EPA accountable for what the plaintiffs consider negligence in violating “their constitutional fundamental right to life and equal protection under the law.” It also seeks clarification on the status of children as a protected legal class in the United States, claiming that environmental regulations typically disregard their specific needs.

"We are experiencing what no one should have to experience,” Avroh, who is identified only by his first name due to his age, said in a statement. "We’re facing constitutional negligence. We’re challenging the EPA’s failure to protect us. The air we breathe has become a casualty of their opposition.”

The EPA has for decades “known that allowing climate pollution would harm children, yet it has intentionally allowed the U.S. to become one of the world’s biggest contributors to climate change,” Our Children’s Trust said in a statement.

Many of the plaintiffs suffer from asthma, which had been linked to toxic exposures. Increasingly severe wildfires throughout the West compound their health issues. That, the suit states, leaves many of them unable to enjoy the same quality of life as their peers, because they cannot pursue the outdoor activities and team sports young people typically enjoy.

Children play catching bugs at a park on July 17, 2023 in Tokyo, Japan.

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The EPA, according to attorneys for Our Children’s Trust, has recognized the unique vulnerability of young children to climate change and environmental toxicity. “Children can be at a greater risk to environmental hazards due to unique activity patterns, behaviors, and biology,” the agency’s 2021 Policy on Children’s Health states.

According to the Center for Disease Control, children are immensely more vulnerable to pollution than adults, and not only because of their smaller size. Children consume more food and water per body weight than adults, they more often touch their eyes and mouths, and their bodies are not as adept at breaking down pollutants. Particulates like those released during wildfires can cause lasting cognitive impairment. The earlier in life, and the more repeatedly, toxic exposure occurs, the more likely a person is to develop chronic health issues and deadly diseases like cancer. It’s also a leading cause of childhood mortality; in 2016, 600,000 deaths of people younger than 15 were attributed to air pollution.

This is not the first time a federal lawsuit has revolved around children — that is, after all, how the groundbreaking desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education was structured. It’s also not the first environmental lawsuit against the EPA, but it is unique in that its language focuses on the particular environmental vulnerability of children.

“Analysis like equal rights or due process [is] very oriented toward adults,” said Phil Gregory, a lawyer working with Our Children’s Trust on the case. Gregory refers to the EPA’s analysis of environmental harm as a “discount-rate analysis” — adults take the highest priority, with children and future generations largely an afterthought.

This approach may have some international backing; the U.N. recently affirmed children’s right to a clean, healthful environment, in line with international human rights law.

Last June, in the similar case Held v. Montana, 16 youth accused the state of Montana, through its fervent support of the fossil fuel industry, of violating the state constitution’s provision that all residents have an inalienable right to a clean and healthy environment. The kids won in a historic first. In August, 14 youth in Hawaiʻi suing the state Department of Transportation on similar grounds learned that the case will go to trial. These successes leave Gregory hopeful that precedents are being set — with more lawsuits running concurrently in Utah, Virginia, and Florida.

The judge in the Held case issued a declaratory judgment calling the government’s conduct unconstitutional. Gregory hopes to see a similar judgment against the EPA, which the suit alleges has presided over a massive increase in fossil fuel pollution during its 50-year tenure and, thus, has failed future generations.

Michael Burger, a law professor at Columbia University, said that is a thorny question for the EPA, which is subject to changes in administration, and is, he said, “severely constrained by the Supreme Court.” However, he is hopeful that such a judgment, while not an injunction or other more forceful maneuver, could push government toward action. “I don’t think it’s just symbolic,” said Burger. “I think a declaration of what the law is and where the government is falling short would be a great deal on many fronts.”

Hackers stole personal and demographic information about millions of California public school students in a data breach revealed Friday by the California Department of Education.

Hackers allegedly accessed the information through the company ETS, which conducts standardized testing, including the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress tests that start in third grade. Between May 22 and Sept. 18, 2026, an “unauthorized party” copied student information files, according to the CDE website.

However, ETS’ investigation did not find that the information has been made public.

What information was taken?

The breach exposed the information of 5.7 million students currently enrolled in transitional kindergarten through high school and those enrolled since 2023. Students who have left California since 2006 without notifying the state that they transferred to another school are also affected. That information could include:

• Student names, birthdays, addresses and schools
• Statewide student ID numbers (SSID)
• Demographic information, including race or ethnicity, gender, country of origin and English learner status
• A student’s disability and related academic support 
• Whether a student is low-income or unhoused 
• Statewide testing results

The breach is not reported to include:

• Parent or guardian information 
• Social Security or driver’s license numbers
• Financial information

ETS is working with cybersecurity experts and law enforcement and is monitoring whether the students’ information appears publicly.

The California Department of Education is also collaborating with state cybersecurity experts and reviewing whether ETS complied with data security and requirements included in its contract with the state. The state has also set up a website with more information.

How to get help

ETS is emailing and sending letters to affected students and families to notify them of the breach and offer two years of free identity protection services. Separate services are available for minors and adults — both have a March 19, 2027 deadline to apply.

It’s important to know that not getting notified does not necessarily mean a student’s data is safe. Families can call a dedicated helpline, 833-931-8488, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Twenty-eight immigrants from across California are facing federal charges alleging they illegally registered to vote or voted in California elections, federal prosecutors announced Monday in the Trump administration’s latest effort to imply California election rolls are riddled with fraudulent voters.

The charges come days after federal authorities filed a lawsuit against state and Los Angeles County election officials that seeks to force elections officials not to count up to 20,000 registered voters’ ballots because federal prosecutors suspect those voters could be non-citizens.

“Today’s charges demonstrate why that lawsuit is so important,” Acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter told reporters. “It’s about preventing voter fraud that cancels out the votes of U.S. citizens. Enforcing federal law increases the integrity of elections.”

McCotter said federal prosecutors filed a motion urging the judge overseeing the lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles to order state officials to segregate the ballots that prosecutors suspect may have already been mailed to noncitizens.

State officials have brushed off the allegations.

Gov. Gavin Newsom last week called the Trump administration’s voter fraud hunt “a sad, desperate attempt by Trump to use his politicized Justice Department to try to suppress California voters just three weeks before Election Day.”

He said the prosecutors’ request to throw out ballots “should scare the hell out of every American.”

“We will continue to carry out free and fair elections in the Golden State — and call out this authoritarian as he tries every play in the dictator’s playbook,” Newsom said in a statement.

The announcement comes just 15 days before the Nov. 3 election in which Californians are already deciding on a new governor, 14 statewide ballot measures and several competitive races that will be key to which party controls Congress.

It’s part of a national push by the Trump administration to find examples of noncitizens voting illegally in elections. Independent experts and state election officials say that voter fraud is exceedingly rare, despite claims from President Donald Trump and his allies that it happens on such a massive scale as to sway elections in Democrats’ favor.

Federal prosecutors said all of the 28 foreign nationals who face charges are lawful permanent residents, otherwise known as green card holders. That means they are legally allowed to stay in the country but they are not citizens and are not allowed to vote in elections.

The defendants live in cities around the state from Los Angeles County to Sacramento. Of them, 22 are accused of voting in at least one election including as recently as the June primary; five only registered to vote and one submitted a provisional ballot in 2020, prosecutors say.

Essayli said that in the last two months, federal prosecutors have charged around 113 noncitizens in 20 states with illegal voting and registration offenses.

The arrests represent just a miniscule fraction of registered voters. For example, more than 9.4 million Californians cast ballots in the June primary election.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, who oversees prosecutors in Los Angeles, said the federal government may charge state election officials with crimes if they allowed noncitizens to vote.

“They are being complicit in noncitizens voting in our elections,” Essayli said. “And as they were warned last week, not only is it a civil violation, but they could also face criminal consequences for that conduct if they knowingly process ballots from noncitizens once we've informed them who the noncitizens are.”

The charges come weeks after federal investigators issued grand jury subpoenas to Los Angeles elections officials seeking information on registered voters.

Federal prosecutors also sought information on registered voters in San Diego County, the news outlet inewsource reported, as well as Orange County, according to records obtained last week by CalMatters.

The Department of Homeland Security recently claimed that Nevada had nearly 16,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls; they sent the state the names of only 185 voters. Nevada officials confirmed they were all U.S. citizens.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Joey Quiñones grew up in East Los Angeles, , where cumbia, punk and oldies soul could all be heard within two blocks. That mix shaped the sound he's built with his band, Thee Sinseers, and on his own. This year, he's out with two very different albums — the band's Love Stories and his solo album, Inna Soul Steady Situation. And most recently, he brought it all back with hometown shows at The Wiltern this past Saturday and Pacific Electric on Sunday.

Quiñones says the sounds of East L.A. are baked into his music.

"You wake up in the morning, and your mom would be cleaning to cumbia, and you'd hear it blasting from the other yards," Quiñones says. "You'd hear the local neighborhood band practicing their punk rock songs. Then you get to the street, and you hear all the oldies with the lowriders on Whittier Boulevard. It's everywhere. We can't sit down and not write a song that doesn't incorporate stuff like that, whether it be the singing or the horn section or the guitar playing. It's always gonna be subliminally in there." 

Quiñones says  Thee Sinseers came together almost by accident, when he accepted a dare to sing. But he knew the band had potential when they started getting paid.

"When we made $100. There was a time when that's really what it was," Quiñones says. "The community of musicians that we have has always supported each other in anything. So to be able to kind of do something where we were able to support our families and support each other was the key thing to really take it seriously. When you don't owe money, then you're doing something.”

The band's new album includes a song called "Let's Fall in Love Again," in which Quiñones admits past mistakes. He says that kind of honesty is the key to his songwriting.

“Life has been the teacher in all this,” Quiñones says. “Sitting down and honestly writing honesty, that's the key to, I don't wanna say soul music, but just good music and just music in general. When you make anything, you put honesty in it, because people know when you're kinda full of it. That's the biggest thing: being able to sit down and reflect and admit faults and admit to the life-changing and getting used to it and adjusting to it.”

Ahead of this past weekend's homecoming, Quiñones admitted that it was a little nerve-racking after touring the world.

"I was really excited about it months ago," he said. "But now it's getting closer and I just want things to be perfect. We're all so excited to play for our families and our friends, so coming home and being able to do that properly is the focus right now for all of us."

Stephen Richer no longer runs elections in the fourth-largest county in the country.

But for the rest of his life, he'll remember the feeling when polls closed on an election night.

More than a million ballots staring at him and his staff. Every moment that passes without them fully counted means another conspiracy theory sprouting online.

"Those days, those were hell for me," said Richer, a Republican who served as the clerk and recorder for Arizona's Maricopa County. "You'd have a limited number of workers, and you'd have a limited amount of space, and you'd be doing everything that you possibly could. … And yet you have everyone blowing up your phone, everyone saying that you're incompetent or corrupt or worse."

This midterm year, election officials in competitive congressional districts will face that same pressure.

But they will also face a hard reality: that those races might not be called until days after Election Day.

Here's an FAQ on why that is, and what it could mean this year.

Why do we know the results immediately in some places, and in others it takes days or weeks?

It comes down to the margin of victory.

Which sounds strange, since who wins an election and by how much shouldn't impact how long it takes election officials to count ballots.

But the reality is what most Americans think of as "election results" — the winners announced on election nights across TV networks and social media — are not the result of all ballots being counted, but rather, races being called by news organizations that determine the winners based on a state or district's demographics and initial returns. (NPR relies on The Associated Press for its race calls.)

Those determinations come a lot faster when races aren't close.

"Margins matter," said Richer, who noted that in recent elections, there has been a lot less scrutiny on Utah than there has been on his home state of Arizona, or certain contests in California, despite the states counting votes at similar speeds.

"In Utah you can call all the races very quickly because the Republicans there have high margins," Richer said.

That gives the illusion of elections there being complete, but no state is done counting ballots on election night, even if it seems that way because notable races are called early.

So you're saying the timing of results isn't at all tied to vote-counting speed?

Not exactly.

The closer the race, the more election analysts need to see before they can make a call. So the faster states count ballots, the faster those determinations can be made.

This is why the longest wait times every election usually come from places that have competitive races and which also count slowly.

Like, California?

Exactly. California has become the poster child for long results times because of both those factors: a bevy of competitive congressional districts, which help determine the balance of power in the U.S. House, and a vote count that's been among the slowest in the nation.

Add in that President Trump, the most prominent purveyor of election misinformation in the country, has long targeted the liberal California, and experts see a perfect storm for false voting narratives.

"It's progressive, it likes mail ballots, it gets [postmarked] mail ballots after Election Day," Richer said. "It just all adds up to a fairly incendiary situation."

Charles Stewart, an elections expert at MIT, put it more simply.

"California just has a big target on its back," said Stewart.

California's slow vote counting caused a lot of conspiracy theorizing during the state's June primary. Is this fall going to be a rerun?

Kim Alexander is cautiously optimistic that won't be the case.

She runs the California Voter Foundation, which has been advocating for ways to speed up California's vote tally without giving up the state's generous voting access policies, like mailing every active registered voter a ballot.

"We have all these amazing rights and opportunities that we give to our voters, and the price we're paying is a longer vote count," Alexander told NPR. "But that doesn't mean that it has to be this long."

An election worker processes ballots for the California state primary at the Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center on June 5.

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The single biggest cause for California's slow count comes from a phenomenon Alexander calls "the pig in the python" problem: a logjam of millions of vote-by-mail ballots getting returned on Election Day that need to be processed.

Those ballots take longer to count than in-person votes, as officials need to deal with envelopes and verify signatures to make sure mail ballots are cast by the people they're supposed to be cast by.

Some counties see up to 50% of their vote-by-mail ballots turned in on Election Day, Alexander said, which means processing work doesn't even begin until later in the week.

"I can't tell you how many people who are informed and engaged and … when I tell them that the cause for the long vote count is voters holding on to their ballots to Election Day and turning them in, they look at me and they're like, 'That's what I do,'" Alexander said. "And I'm like, 'I know! You're part of the problem!'"

The state allocated $40 million to speeding up its counting this year, and part of that money is going to voter education.

Alexander is optimistic that once voters learn they can play a role in speeding up the process by voting earlier, or by utilizing other voting methods that allow for quicker counting, they will respond.

"California has been beaten up by this president for over a decade over our election process, and it's gotten pretty worrisome," Alexander said. "I think that California voters, if they feel they can do something to respond to that, many will take action."

To that point, research conducted earlier this year found that when voters in California's San Joaquin County received postcards urging them to vote earlier, they were more likely to meet the recommended deadline that allowed for election-night counting.

Alexander noted one more change that could mean less spotlight on California this year: fewer competitive House districts.

Ahead of the 2022 elections, the state had nine districts that the Cook Political Report considered competitive. But this year, in part because voters approved a mid-cycle gerrymander to respond to gerrymanders in Republican-controlled states, the state has just three.

That makes it less likely the entire country will be waiting on California to know who controls the House.

OK, anywhere else we should be watching when it comes to results speed?

Using the formula discussed earlier (competitive races + slow vote counting), it's impossible not to look at Alaska.

According to data from the MIT Election Lab, Alaska was the last state in 2024 to reach 95% of its ballots counted.

Election Day was Nov. 5 that year, but the state's lone House race — which Republican Nicholas Begich won by fewer than 10,000 votes — wasn't called by the AP until Nov. 20.

This year, polling shows a tight Alaska Senate race. That means, if results fall a certain way in other states, the entire country could be waiting weeks to know which party will control the U.S. Senate next year.
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